“81% of Americans feel they have a book in them … And should write it,” wrote Joseph Epstein in a New York Times Op-Ed in 2002, citing a survey by the Jenkins Group. Yesterday at The Guardian Ewan Morrison mentions this fact while arguing that the recent excitement about digital…
Another week, another entry into the jostling self-publishing market. Dominic Rushe and Jeevan Vasagar report in The Guardian that on January 19, Apple announced iBooks Author, a software application that helps textbook authors create interactive teaching ‘iBooks’ for the iPad. At first glance, iBooks Author…
Just over a month before the election in Iran, the world’s media is beginning to weigh in on a fresh wave of arrests of bloggers, journalists and web users in the country—though of course these remain unreported in Iran’s official media outlets. Among the most recent arrests…
The Cairo International Book Fair is back with a vengance, according to a report in the Egyptian Gazette. Though cancelled last January due to revolution, the fair is back—and the books, as it turns out, are all about … revolution, according to the Gazeete: “Nearly…
It takes a certain something to earn the hometown back-slap that is New York Magazine‘s Approval Matrix. For a book to make its coolest quadrant — the one bordered by “Brilliant” and “Highbrow” — well, you can imagine. Or can you? Say what you will…
No, we’re not offering Craig Ferguson a record breaking deal for his first kids book. There is however, a bit of a back story to this post. Last August we heard tell that one of our novellas appeared on Ferguson’s Late Late Show in a…
Your favorite authors favorite books of all time Kindle Fire sales hit 6Million in Q4 Mazama Book Festival to debut in the Pacific Northwest Jonathan Franzen: eBooks are damaging society Palestinian bookshop owner celebrates Jerusalem residency ruling A new honor for the hatchet job How…
It’s a small thing, but over and over again I’ve seen industry observers appear impressed that Amazon Publishing — recently renamed “Amazon Publishing’s East Coast Group” — was able to acquire James Franco’s first novel, Actors Anonymous. The Times headlined the acquisition a “coup” and…
“I predict,” writes novelist Rex Pickett (Sideways), “in less than 10 years time, the traditional publishing industry, now moribund and flailing like a bird on broken wings, will be dead, or will morph into something almost totally unrecognizable from what it was for a century.” Prognostications…
More signs of push-back against Amazon this weekend: Goodreads, the literary social networking site that not only allows readers to discuss books they’re reading, but offers core data about those books, allows readers to store and share information about what they’re reading, and facilitates buying…
William Gibson on Derek Raymond In Saturday’s New York Times there was a great interview with writer William Gibson that touched base on the author’s many diverse interests. Naturally one of the questions asked of Gibson was what he is currently reading. Turns out Gibson…
A novel idea at the library at Utah State University’s Merrill-Cazier Library has them lending something in addition to novels. According to a report from the Ogden, Utah Standard Examiner, the library has instituted a “human book” program. That’s right, you can check out an interesting human…
10 of literature’s trippiest books The art of the newspaper column Literary icons of LA From book to film: nominees for adapted screenplay Atheist writers clash over how to not worship a nonexistent God The legacy of Henry Miller’s ‘Tropic of Cancer’ Censored tweets? Fake…
Or so the nation’s largest bookseller would have the record read. At the Digital Book World Conference this past week Barnes & Noble VP of eBooks Jim Hilt suggested many things, with most of them seeming, well, like snow jobs. MocoNews reported Hilt’s talk and…
Melville House announced today that it has offered wannabe children’s book author Stephen Colbert its biggest deal ever for a first book. After hearing Colbert describe his proposed illustrated children’s book, I Am A Pole, And You Can Too—the story of a lost pole that ultimately finds its…
The quarrel broke out in summer 2010, has just been reignited, and, unresolved, will no doubt rear its head again. Jennifer Weiner, alongside other women novelists including Jodi Picoult, has drawn attention to the paucity of women reviewers and reviews of books by women in…
In 2003, J.G. Ballard famously rejected a CBE (Commander of the British Empire), one of the royal honors bestowed annually by the Queen on various luminaries, saying, “I might have been tempted had I been entitled to call myself Commander Ballard — it has a certain…
On this date, January 27, the eminent mathematician and Fellow of Christ Church college, Oxford, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born in 1832. He is the distinguished author of An Elementary Treatise on Determinants, With Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraic Equations (1867); two…
Amazon’s Hit Man Average price of Kindle book lower than Nook Why Rushdie’s voice was silenced in Jaipur Things to worry about The secret to going viral 6 authors who moonlighted as lyricists Why people pirate eBooks The Lord of the Rings genealogy project So…
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer got in a heated argument with President Barack Obama over her book yesterday when she greeted him upon his arrival at the Phoenix airport. According to a report in the Boston Globe, they were arguing about her memoir, Scorpions for Breakfast, which defends…
Years ago I worked as a poker dealer in a small Indian casino in Northern California. It was a three-table poker room with mostly regular players and a friendly atmosphere. One of the least popular players was a man named “Bill,” an overweight man with…
In a waaaay too long essay (in English) for the Russian government newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Vladimir Putin declares that he wants to establish a “Russian Canon” of 100 books that—as a summary on the Atlantic Wire puts it—is “more rigid and purpose-driven than the Western Canon.” As…
British publisher Peter McGee, of London-based publishing house Albertas Press, has apparently backed down from his vow to publish excerpts from Adolf Hitler‘s book Mein Kampf (see the earlier MobyLives report) after a German court ruled to do so would be in violation of copyright.…
This can’t be true: According to this year’s edition of the annual survey of American literacy from Central Connecticut State University, none other than Washington D.C. is, for the second year in a row, our nations “most literate city.” A USA Today story says the rankings…
The 5 Books That Inspire the Most Tattoos 15 Famous Authors’ Beautiful Estates Quotable goodreads Random House & Sesame Street launch e-imprint eBook growth slower than thought Amazon lawsuit tests ‘No Harm, No Foul’ rule Jonathan Safran Foer writing pilot for HBO Australian Indie Awards…
Amazon‘s seemingly inexorable march to a vertical monopoly undreamed of even by Carnegie and Fisk took another deeply perverse twist yesterday when the company revealed how its New York book-publishing arm — which sometime in the night was apparently given the mellifluous name, “Amazon Publishing’s East Coast…
The paperback of Banana Yoshimoto’s The Lake is in bookstores today. The novel has been shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and praised by The New York Times (which noted that the novel “attests to the power of emotional intimacy to help even…
For those of you who missed this late-breaking story yesterday, a turkey broke into the Deadwood Public Library. Here’s how things went down, according to a report in The Black Hills (SD) Pioneer: Library Director Jeanette Chaney-Moodie received a call around 9 a.m. Sunday morning from the Lawrence…
A treat for readers in the UK: on Friday The Independent published its list of the fifty best bookshops in the land, picked by the following literary bigwigs: Chris Conway, MD of The Book Partnership Sara Sheridan, a historical novelist Lisa Campbell, Retail Reporter for The Bookseller…
Strange, but for all his suaveness in the 7,394 debates that have taken place so far between the Republican candidates, and despite his generally prolix nature when it comes to talking about himself, Newt Gingrich has thus far in the campaign failed to tout what is perhaps…
